On the day The Narwhal went out on pollution patrol with Transport Canada’s National Aerial Surveillance Program in early June, the morning started in a second-storey office on the outskirts of the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond

The team (two pilots, two surveillance technicians and a manager/senior technician) assemble in a briefing room. The crew pours over the latest weather reports, satellite imagery of real-time shipping traffic and any reports of weekend spills. In this way, each day’s flight plan is a custom creation.

I’m with filmmaker David Lavallee to get a first-hand view of what it’s like on the front lines of marine pollution first response on British Columbia coast.

We are briefed for emergency readiness and board the cherry-red plane — a highly customized former commercial Dash-8 — one of three maritime pollution surveillance planes that Transport Canada employs on the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coasts under the banner of the National Aerial Surveillance Program.

On the day we fly, an oil slick has been reported in Vancouver’s False Creek, which is the first top of the flight.

The Dash-8 has been heavily modified with radar, specialized cameras and much more — with modified fuel tanks that make a six-hour, return flight to the Alaska border possible.

No spill is visible as we cross False Creek, but as the plane rises over Burrard Inlet, an unreported iridescent slick of suspected hydrocarbon comes into view. The pollution is photographed and analyzed to produce an estimate of the amount of fuel on the surface.

This spill is what senior technologist Owen Rusticus calls a “mystery spill” — there is no obvious source (such as a nearby ship trailing oil), but one possible explanation is that a ship has left its bilge pump on auto, discharging fuel-tainted water into the inlet.

For densely populated areas with heavy shipping traffic, the crew relies largely on sight to detect spills, with the background help of built-in technology that can detect the unique surface effect of oily substances on water.

As we cut across Georgia Strait to scan the shipping lanes off the west coast of Vancouver Island however, the plane rises much higher (20,000 feet is the limit) and relies entirely on sensors for its pollution detection.

Before we rise above the clouds about 65 km off the coast of Tofino, we spot and photograph a group of about nine white Risso’s dolphins, followed by two separate pairs of fin whales — which are photographed and reported to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Pilot Simon Pearce says they typically see “a lot of humpbacks and sometimes sperm whales” closer to shore off Vancouver Island at this time of year, and further offshore, fin and blue whales.

During the nearly five-hour flight, we witness how dedicated and skilled the Transport Canada surveillance crew are. In 2018 alone, the Pacific aerial surveillance program reported 550 spills (between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019) — many of them relatively small hydrocarbon spills.

On our flight, the Burrard Inlet spill was estimated to contain fewer than four litres, and a tiny slick near Nanaimo was fewer than 0.5 litres. So what happens to mystery spill reports of small quantities?

Transport Canada spokesman Simon Rivet later tells me the mystery spill information informs Transport Canada’s “overall knowledge of marine oil spills in Canadian waters, including their location, extent, frequency and the total amount of oil spilled.” The data also informs where future patrols will happen.

Despite the Canadian government’s stated “zero tolerance for polluting Canada’s marine environment,” (as per a pamphlet for the surveillance program from Transport Canada in 2011), there were just two “administrative monetary penalties” issued to two vessels for discharging pollutants in the Pacific region last year — both of them for less than $2,000.

With the recent federal approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which could see a seven-fold increase in the number of oil tankers plying the southern B.C. coast, the surveillance work of these little-known eyes-in-the-sky will only become more important.

Video by White Gold Productions

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This article originally appeared on The Tyee.

A study commissioned at the request of a First Nation says the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has not reported accurately on the scale or impact of daily crude oil and salt water spills in the petro province.


The regulator has not provided “the public with accurate, credible, complete, unbiased and timely information and fails in its responsibility to protect the environment,” the study concluded.


Kevin Timoney, author of the report and an independent ecologist based in Alberta, called for the province’s auditor general to audit “the failure of the regulator.”


Timoney’s review of the regulator’s spill database found spills that were not recorded in the database at all, or didn’t include information on volume spilled. 


In addition, he found the regulator routinely reported that 100 per cent of the spilled contaminants had been recovered after pollution events, although scientific studies have found clean-up rates for spills on land typically recover less than half the oil.


Timoney also says that AER spill reporting lacked scientific credibility because it suggested there had been almost no damage to wildlife and animals in Alberta.


The problem is immense. Spillage from the province’s well pads, pipelines and batteries onto farmland, forests, muskeg and rivers is extensive and averages 1.7 crude oil spills a day and one salt water spill a day, says the report.  


Aging oil wells typically produce more salt water than they do oil, or approximately 10 barrels of toxic water for every barrel of oil produced in North America. Produced water can also contain hydrocarbons and radioactive material. 


In Alberta, industry is required to report any release of hydrocarbons into a waterway, or “any unrefined product release” that flows off an industry lease, or spills greater than 12 barrels on an industry lease site such as a well pad.

As part of his research, Timoney examined Alberta’s spill database over a 38-year period between 1975 and 2013 and visited major spill sites to gauge the impacts on water, land and plants.


In that time period, industry spilled at least 1.6 million barrels (256,712 cubic metres) of crude oil and more than five million barrels of salt water onto the land and waterways, according to Timoney’s analysis of the AER database.


That works out to 42,105 barrels of oil spilled every year across the province, whose landscape has been marked by 400,000 well sites and 415,000 kilometres of pipelines.  


In contrast, Enbridge spilled more than 23,809 barrels of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. It cost more than $1 billion to clean up the disaster.  


But Timoney found that the AER’s spillage statistics did not reflect the real scale of the problem because of missing data and other issues.


“There are a lot of spills unaccounted for with no volume specified,” said Timoney. For example, he found many documented spills that appeared in newspapers aren’t in the database.


The AER database also does not include thousands of spills prior to 1975; spills from federally regulated pipelines; spills reported to Alberta’s environment ministry; or spills that classify oil or salt water as the second or third contaminant. 


In addition, the regulator has often reported perfect recovery rates from most spills even though Timoney could find “no scientific studies” that documented total recovery of spilled oil or saline water on land. Saline spills can be more damaging to plants and vegetation because salts don’t degrade over time.

The regulator’s claim of full recovery is “patently false,” concluded Timoney in an interview.



Scientific studies show that there is impact, large or small, and that the recovery rate for spilled oil on land averages around 43 per cent while the recovery rate for ocean spills averages less than 15 per cent of the hydrocarbons recovered.


“Industry-reported impact rates from outside of Alberta are 30 to 50 times higher than those reported in Alberta,” says the report. “Evidence demonstrates that AER is failing to record animal deaths or injuries in its incident database.”


Timoney found, for example, that AER data indicated harm to habitat in less than one per cent of crude oil spills and even less for saline spills. 


Yet a 2005 peer reviewed study in Oklahoma showed that 34 per cent of oil and saline water spills “resulted in reported injury to environmental receptors (surface water, crops or livestock, soil, fish, or wildlife).” 


Peter Murchland, a public affairs manager with the AER, told The Tyee that it couldn’t verify exactly how Timoney was determining or defining perfect recovery. “As Mr. Timoney’s report has not been made publicly available, the AER cannot provide specific responses to the claims made regarding the accuracy of spill reporting data in the province.”


He added that the data set that Timoney used on spill response in the province between 1975 and 2013 “provides only a partial picture of spill clean up and damage to habitat as a result of spills in the province” and doesn’t tell the full story.

The regulator’s low estimates of damage from spills may be partly explained by the fact that other regulators such as Alberta Environment may have been involved in the process.

Prior to 2013 the board only tracked what was in its mandate and impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitat were not under the board’s jurisdiction, added Murchland.

“If the spill caused damage to a sensitive area or wildlife/livestock outside of the regulator’s jurisdiction, it may have been marked (for lack of a better option in the system) as not affected,” Murchland said.


The AER is largely funded by industry and chaired by a former energy lobbyist. 


In 2013, new legislation governing the regulator centralized duties formally carried by three ministries into the AER and dropped the board’s original mandate to “provide economic, orderly and efficient development in the public interest of the oil and gas resources in Alberta.”




Its job now is to provide “for the efficient, safe, orderly and environmentally responsible development of energy resources.”

“It is important to note that when the Government of Alberta brought together three regulators to form the AER in 2013, it was about building a regulator capable of ensuring public safety, protecting the environment and managing cumulative effects,” said Murchland.

But landowners who’ve fought the regulator in recent years say that is nonsense and that the agency is now more unaccountable than ever to the public.

Timoney attributed shortfalls in spill reporting to the board’s conflicted mandate: “The AER is there to serve industry and somehow try to protect the environment. But the AER serves their funding source which is industry.”



‘No record’ of spill



Timoney also visited 14 former oil spill sites in Alberta to measure the impact over time. At one site in northwestern Alberta where oil was released in 1998, the ecologist found the soil contaminated with 21.7 per cent crude oil (210,000 mg/kg).



“There is either no record of this spill in the AER database or the spill took place in 1998 and was later certified as cleaned up,” he told The Tyee. 

Timoney adds that wherever he looked at spill sites, he found “detectable soil, water and vegetation impacts.”

Regulator claims about “cleanup recovery dates, indicating completion of oil spill cleanup, are managerial decisions that are unjustified by the available scientific data,” says the report’s abstract. 

Dene Tha First Nation requested the spill study, while the Keepers of the Water helped to fund it. It took a year and a half to produce and will soon be published as a 200-page book.

The study reinforces the findings of a Global News investigation in 2013 on pipelines regulated by Alberta from 1975 to 2012. Using the same database it found that pipelines alone were responsible for 28,666 crude oil spills, an average of nearly 775 per year or two oil spills every day for a period of 37 years.


Given that farmland and waterways can take decades to recover from oil spills, “the industry is causing wholesale, long-term damage to ecosystems,” concluded the report.

Contamination of groundwater can take centuries or thousands of years to heal.

Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey on oil spills in Oklahoma “clearly show that significant amounts of salts from produced-water releases and petroleum hydrocarbons still remain in the soils and rocks of the impacted area after more than 60 years of natural attenuation.”


Alberta has a long and dramatic record of large oil spills. In 1970, Suncor spilled 50,000 gallons of synthetic crude into the Athabasca River while Imperial Oil flooded farmland west of Edmonton with 28,000 barrels of oil.

In recent years industry has authored more spectacular spills in Alberta, including an Apache-operated pipeline that dumped 9.5 million litres (60,000 barrels) of industrial wastewater into a muskeg in 2013.

Two years later, a Nexen pipeline released 5 million litres of bitumen wastewater into the boreal forest near Fort McMurray.

Regulators across North America employ a haphazard approach to reporting spills that rarely involves fines or enforcement orders. In North Dakota, industry must report all spills greater than one barrel while Oklahoma doesn’t require any notification unless a spill exceeds 10 barrels. 


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the U.S. petroleum industry spills anywhere from 10 to 25 million gallons of oil a year (793,650 barrels), and that these oil releases contaminate groundwater, damage farmland, harm wildlife, devalue property and threaten public health and safety.

Nigeria may have the worst record in the world for toxic oil spills. The volume of oil spilled in the Niger Delta ranges from 100,000 to 300,000 barrels of oil a year. It is considered one of the most oil spill vulnerable areas in the world.


A 2011 United Nations report warned that oil spills in Ogoniland alone had contaminated groundwater, killed mangrove swamps and exposed the local population to toxic hydrocarbons in the air and water. A billion-dollar clean up began last year.

In 2011 the New York Times reported that the oil pipeline network had spilled 110 million gallons of mostly crude oil since 1990. Most of the contamination occurred in three oil-exporting states: Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

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Governments love buzzwords — probably because they roll off the tongue so nicely that people often overlook the fact they’re meaningless.

Take one of the B.C. government’s favourite expressions of late: “world leading” oil spill response.

It’s included not once, but twice, in B.C.’s five conditions for approval of oil pipelines — used to give the green light to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

But what does “world leading” oil spill response actually mean?

“I see a lot of gaps in this wording of ‘world class’ response,” says Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who was working as a commercial fisher in Cordova, Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in March 1989, spilling more than 41 million litres of oil into Prince William Sound.

Ott says little has changed in terms of oil spill response in the past 28 years. She witnessed that first hand during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

“I set foot down in Louisiana 21 years after the Exxon Valdez and I’m watching the news and I’m seeing it’s the same booms, it’s the same burning, it’s the same dispersants that were used 21 years ago,” Ott said.  “I thought surely we had all learned lessons from the Exxon Valdez and that industry was going to be forced to improve its clean up methods based on lessons learned. Nope.”

The fact is there is no proven way to clean up a large oil spill in water.

Transport Canada expects only 10 to 15 per cent of a marine oil spill to be recovered from open water. That’s about as good as it gets.

But it gets a whole lot worse, especially when you’re dealing with diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from the oilsands — which nobody actually has a clue how to clean up, because it sinks.

“There is no known clean-up response for dilbit,” Ott told DeSmog Canada. “All of our so-called cleanup equipment deals with floating oil: the booms, the dispersants, the skimmers. You could have all the floating boom and skimmers available, but this stuff is going to sink so it’s not going to be effective.”

Diluted bitumen is comprised of the “worst parts of crude oil,” Ott says.

It has both the persistent, concentrated heavy hydrocarbons that end up on beaches or the ocean floor and don’t readily evaporate or dissolve.  But it also has the volatile organic compounds, which are a hazard for spill responders, nearby public and wildlife.

“I would not want to see an Exxon Valdez- or a BP Deepwater Horizon-sized oil spill in British Columbia,” Ott said. “You’re not ready for it. You’re just not.”

Ott said Alaskans made a lot of assumptions going into the Exxon Valdez spill.

“You trust the government has these standards in place, that the government is ready, that you’re going to be taken care of if there is a spill,” she said.

“Instead what we found was that promises sound really good when the industry and the government want something and it all becomes kind of like smoke after the ink is dry on the permits.”

Nearly 28 years later, the herring fishery in Prince William Sound has never recovered. One pod of orcas has never reproduced since.

“Things just collapsed,” Ott said. “What comes back is not quite the same. It’s like Humpty Dumpty. It’s not put together quite the same way any more.”

About a third of the fishing community had to leave town because they couldn’t make ends meet. It took 10 years for the salmon to recover.

The stress led to spikes in domestic violence, substance abuse and suicide — all documented in Ott’s book Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.

“The state wasn’t there for us, the federal government wasn’t there, certainly Exxon wasn’t there. And it took 20 years before the litigation ended even for our most basic fishing claims,” Ott said. “This is what communities need to be ready for.”

Ott says there are plenty of red flags about B.C.’s ability to respond to an oil spill.

“You’ve already had a couple wake-up calls: you had the Marathassa oil spill right in English Bay … and it got away. And then you had Bella Bella much more recently … and it still got away.”

In the Bella Bella instance, a fuel barge tug ran aground, leaking an estimated 227,000 litres of diesel fuel. Oil spill response efforts were repeatedly hampered by poor water, failed spill containment and even an incident where a spill response ship took on water and itself began to sink. Meantime, the Heiltsuk’s shellfish harvesting areas were devastated.

“B.C. does not have world-class response. We’ve already seen that. It’s already been demonstrated,” Ott said. “It’s all shouldered off onto the communities that live near the shores where this stuff happens.”

“My hope as your neighbor across the border is that people really wake up and realize that the government has promised nothing.”

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Sabrina Zuniga, the Conservative party candidate running in the riding of Spadina-Fort York in Ontario, was caught on tape claiming that "oil is a natural substance… so spilling into the environment, the land will absorb it because that's what oil is."

Zuniga's riding is in close proximity to the route of the Enbridge Line 9B pipeline, which may soon be carrying diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands through the Greater Toronto Area.

Here's the clip care of Buzzfeed Canada:

Zuniga's opinion is somewhat misguided.

First of all, not all oil spills happen on land.

Just this past April a bulk carrier spilled thick, toxic bunker fuel into Vancouver's scenic English Bay. The accident exposed Vancouver's lack of spill response preparedness and left resident's in a state of disbelief as 'tarballs' spread out across the city's famous beaches. City officials had to plead with over-eager residents not to engage in volunteer clean up because the fuel is dangerously toxic.

A 2007 study done into the effects of a bunker fuel spill in San Francisco found the toxic effects of the oil killed off herring stocks and produced birth defects and shorter lifespans in other fish species.

The fuel that spilled in the water posed a significant challenge to clean up crews because bunker fuel is dense and viscous and not prone to floating on the water's surface. Opponents to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion argue a similar issue will arise in the event of a bitumen tanker spill in B.C.'s waters.

And it turns out there's no baseline data for Vancouver's waters, nor are there any long-term monitoring programs in place. The Stephen Harper government axed the only research program that studied industrial pollutants in marine mammals. So the actual effects of that spill on the local environment will remain a frustrating mystery.

When oil does spill on land it is by no means simply reabsorbed by the environment, as Zuniga suggests.

In 2011 a Plains Midstream pipeline fractured in the Woodland Cree reserve in Alberta, north of Peace River, spilling 28,000 barrels of crude into forest and muskeg. The regulator in Alberta at the time, the Energy Resources Conservation Board, said the location of the spill posed significant challenges for clean up. Toxic substances like toulene were found to have migrated through the wetlands away from the main spill site and posed significant health risks to human and animal health.

While the oil was spilling out into the environment, chemical vapours migrated to an elementary school 12 kilometres away where children experienced dizziness and nausea before the principal announced an emergency closure of the school. 

In 2010 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured near a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The pipeline spilled 1.1 million gallons of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands into the river system where it settled and mixed with sediment on the riverbed. Diluted bitumen is toxic to human health and aquatic species. 

The spill spanned more than 25 kilometres and with a price tag of over $1 billion it is the costliest spill in North American history. 

So, although Zuniga would like to suggest oil spills, which are a central concern to communitites along the routes of the Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain, Energy East and Enbridge's Line 9 pipelines, are no big deal, that's clearly not the case.

It doesn't serve Zuniga's campaign to downplay the significance of oil spills, nor will it serve her constitutents. 

Read our summary of where the main federal parties running in the Canadian election stand on the related issue of climate change.

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A letter submitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the State Department gives new weight to concerns the proposed $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline, destined to carry crude from the Alberta oilsands to export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico, will have significant climate impacts.

The EPA letter suggests existing analyses – which downplay the importance of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project – are out of date and require revision in light of low global oil prices.

Due to the plummeting of oil prices and related market changes “it is important to revisit [the] conclusions” of previous reports, EPA told the State Department.

“Given recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the additional low prices scenario in the (State report) should be given additional weight during decision making, due to the potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions.”

The State Department is due to release a revised analysis of the Keystone XL project and is currently gathering comments from the EPA and other agencies.

A recent report in the journal Nature singled out the oilsands as one of the world’s carbon deposits that must remain in the ground if global temperatures are to remain within the 2 degrees Celsius warming limit recommended by policy makers and scientists.  

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is dependent on a steady flow of oil from the estimated 160 billion barrels in the oilsands. Yet the drop in prices has recently led to abandoned projects and major cuts to the workforce. Suncor, the oilsands’ largest operator, recently announced it will eliminate 1,000 jobs, Shell Canada will cuts its workforce by 10 per cent and Cenovus Energy confirmed its investment in the area will drop by 25 per cent.

A Republican-led Congress is attempting to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline with new legislation, although President Barack Obama has been clear about his plan to veto any bills that would allow construction to begin.

In 2013, Obama indicated his final decision on the pipeline will come down to the project’s climate impact, saying “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

In its letter to the State Department this week, the EPA said carbon emissions from the pipeline — which has the capacity to carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day — would add up to the equivalent of 5.7 million new passenger vehicles on the road.

“Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” the letter states.

Alberta premier Jim Prentice travelled to Washington, D.C. this week to lobby Congress and the Obama administration to approve the pipeline.

Prentice recently told NPR that Alberta “has the most exacting standards around in terms of carbon emissions, the regulatory framework that surrounds industrial emissions.”

When it comes to the venting and flaring of gasses with high warming potentials like methane, Prentice said, “in all these areas, I think we’re world class.”

Yet the EPA seems to have come to its own conclusion regarding Alberta’s greenhouse gas regulations, stating, “until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread…development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Canada currently has no regulation to limit emissions from the oil and gas industry, and recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it would be “crazy” to introduce such rules.

The EPA letter notes “oil sands crude has significantly higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than other crudes” and that the use of oilsands crude creates emissions 17 per cent greater than the use of crude refined in the U.S. on a well-to-wheels basis.

Premier Prentice argued Canada will continue to move crude to the U.S. with or without the Keystone XL pipeline, suggesting rail will pick up the slack. In its letter the EPA appears to agree with this point, suggesting oilsands producers would likely stomach the high cost of rail transport.

But the letter goes on to point to the additional risks associated with transporting large quantities of bitumen, which “can have different impacts than spills of conventional oil.” A recent government-commissioned study in Canada acknowledges there are large gaps in existing knowledge when it comes to the effects of bitumen spills.

Concerns over the pipeline route, especially in Nebraska, requires greater spill preparedness and a clear commitment from TransCanada that the company will assume responsibility for any spills and remediation should a release occur. Spills remain “a concern for citizens and businesses relying on groundwater resources crossed by the route,” the EPA letter notes.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called the letter a “damning report” and said with it, “the president’s got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle.”

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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Ecojustice lawyers were among the many to file motions to the National Energy Board late last week regarding Kinder Morgan’s poor and non-existent responses to questions posed to it by intervenors. And while we were generally disappointed by Kinder Morgan’s evasive approach, we were shocked at one reply in particular.

When asked whether there is any evidence from cold water oil spills to suggest marine fish are impacted, Kinder Morgan’s response was that: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.”

That’s right –  Kinder Morgan’s view is that when oil is spilled in water, there is little harm to fish, and it is more likely the fish will be just fine.

The motion Ecojustice lawyers filed on behalf of our clients, Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, asks the Board to order Kinder Morgan to fully respond to our clients’ first round of information requests about the Trans Mountain Expansion Project.

Kinder Morgan received more than 10,000 questions from intervenors. As we wrote last month, the company asked for an extension of the time limit to respond, but got only 14 of the 23 days they asked for. Our clients supported the request, in the interest of allowing Kinder Morgan time to provide as much information as possible.

Kinder Morgan's slippery responses

But now that the responses are in, we wonder whether the extra nine days would have made a difference. Responses from the company have ranged from vague to incomplete to non-existent. In short The information provided by Kinder Morgan is not nearly good enough. Of the 253 responses our clients received from the company, at least 77 – approximately 30 per cent – were inadequate. 

In 20 responses, Kinder Morgan refused to answer the question in whole or in part, by:

• Claiming it was “not relevant” to the review (including the record of leaks and ruptures on Kinder Morgan’s other pipeline systems, and the make and model of clean-up equipment); or
• Stating that it did not have the information (including air monitoring information), because the data do not exist, because the answer was not in the documents they relied on in the application, or because they had not done the necessary work to answer.

In five responses, Kinder Morgan gave a response which only partially answered the question or provided an answer but not the supporting data requested.

In the remainder of the responses, Kinder Morgan simply didn’t answer the questions it was asked. Here’s a snapshot of the ways the company answered questions with non-answers:

• Cited a large document or report rather than provide an clear answer;
• Referred to a document that did not contain any answer to the question; 
• Said it would file an answer later; or
• Cited a legal standard rather than address facts. 

As we mentioned above, when our clients asked if there was evidence from cold water oil spills, beyond evidence from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, of marine fish communities or habitat being impacted for more than two years after a spill, this was Kinder Morgan’s response: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.” 

In support of that mystifying non-answer, Kinder Morgan cited a 264-page report from Enbridge’s reply evidence in the Northern Gateway pipeline hearings. 

We’ve written about how, in the wake of the 2012 omnibus budget bill, reviews of major pipeline projects have been scaled back dramatically, sacrificing good science and process for “efficiency." The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project hearing, with its 15-month time limit and lack of oral cross-examination, is a prime example of how this shift is deeply problematic. 

We are now halfway through the two rounds of intervenor information requests, which are intervenors’ only chance to ask Kinder Morgan questions about its 15,000-page application. Our clients are increasingly worried that they will be unable to meaningfully challenge Kinder Morgan’s evidence, particularly given its evasive approach to our information requests. 

But as for the fish, according to Kinder Morgan, they will be just fine.

– See more at: http://www.ecojustice.ca/blog/the-fish-are-fine-kinder-morgan-says#sthash.r1Uyl1mI.dpuf

Ecojustice lawyers were among the many to file motions to the National Energy Board late last week regarding Kinder Morgan’s poor and non-existent responses to questions posed to it by intervenors. And while we were generally disappointed by Kinder Morgan’s evasive approach, we were shocked at one reply in particular.

When asked whether there is any evidence from cold water oil spills to suggest marine fish are impacted, Kinder Morgan’s response was that: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.”

That’s right –  Kinder Morgan’s view is that when oil is spilled in water, there is little harm to fish, and it is more likely the fish will be just fine.

The motion Ecojustice lawyers filed on behalf of our clients, Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, asks the Board to order Kinder Morgan to fully respond to our clients’ first round of information requests about the Trans Mountain Expansion Project.

Kinder Morgan received more than 10,000 questions from intervenors. As we wrote last month, the company asked for an extension of the time limit to respond, but got only 14 of the 23 days they asked for. Our clients supported the request, in the interest of allowing Kinder Morgan time to provide as much information as possible.

Kinder Morgan's slippery responses

But now that the responses are in, we wonder whether the extra nine days would have made a difference. Responses from the company have ranged from vague to incomplete to non-existent. In short The information provided by Kinder Morgan is not nearly good enough. Of the 253 responses our clients received from the company, at least 77 – approximately 30 per cent – were inadequate. 

In 20 responses, Kinder Morgan refused to answer the question in whole or in part, by:

• Claiming it was “not relevant” to the review (including the record of leaks and ruptures on Kinder Morgan’s other pipeline systems, and the make and model of clean-up equipment); or
• Stating that it did not have the information (including air monitoring information), because the data do not exist, because the answer was not in the documents they relied on in the application, or because they had not done the necessary work to answer.

In five responses, Kinder Morgan gave a response which only partially answered the question or provided an answer but not the supporting data requested.

In the remainder of the responses, Kinder Morgan simply didn’t answer the questions it was asked. Here’s a snapshot of the ways the company answered questions with non-answers:

• Cited a large document or report rather than provide an clear answer;
• Referred to a document that did not contain any answer to the question; 
• Said it would file an answer later; or
• Cited a legal standard rather than address facts. 

As we mentioned above, when our clients asked if there was evidence from cold water oil spills, beyond evidence from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, of marine fish communities or habitat being impacted for more than two years after a spill, this was Kinder Morgan’s response: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.” 

In support of that mystifying non-answer, Kinder Morgan cited a 264-page report from Enbridge’s reply evidence in the Northern Gateway pipeline hearings. 

We’ve written about how, in the wake of the 2012 omnibus budget bill, reviews of major pipeline projects have been scaled back dramatically, sacrificing good science and process for “efficiency." The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project hearing, with its 15-month time limit and lack of oral cross-examination, is a prime example of how this shift is deeply problematic. 

We are now halfway through the two rounds of intervenor information requests, which are intervenors’ only chance to ask Kinder Morgan questions about its 15,000-page application. Our clients are increasingly worried that they will be unable to meaningfully challenge Kinder Morgan’s evidence, particularly given its evasive approach to our information requests. 

But as for the fish, according to Kinder Morgan, they will be just fine.

– See more at: http://www.ecojustice.ca/blog/the-fish-are-fine-kinder-morgan-says#sthash.r1Uyl1mI.dpuf

This is a guest post by Ecojustice staff lawyer Dyna Tuytel.

Ecojustice lawyers were among the many to file motions to the National Energy Board late last week regarding Kinder Morgan’s poor and non-existent responses to questions posed to it by intervenors. And while we were generally disappointed by Kinder Morgan’s evasive approach, we were shocked at one reply in particular.

When asked whether there is any evidence from cold water oil spills to suggest marine fish are impacted, Kinder Morgan’s response was that: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.”

That’s right — Kinder Morgan’s view is that when oil is spilled in water, there is little harm to fish, and it is more likely the fish will be just fine.

The motion Ecojustice lawyers filed on behalf of our clients, Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, asks the Board to order Kinder Morgan to fully respond to our clients’ first round of information requests about the Trans Mountain Expansion Project.

Kinder Morgan received more than 10,000 questions from intervenors. As we wrote last month, the company asked for an extension of the time limit to respond, but got only 14 of the 23 days they asked for. Our clients supported the request, in the interest of allowing Kinder Morgan time to provide as much information as possible.

Kinder Morgan's slippery responses

But now that the responses are in, we wonder whether the extra nine days would have made a difference. Responses from the company have ranged from vague to incomplete to non-existent. In short, the information provided by Kinder Morgan is not nearly good enough. Of the 253 responses our clients received from the company, at least 77 — approximately 30 per cent — were inadequate. 

In 20 responses, Kinder Morgan refused to answer the question in whole or in part, by:

• Claiming it was “not relevant” to the review (including the record of leaks and ruptures on Kinder Morgan’s other pipeline systems, and the make and model of clean-up equipment); or
• Stating that it did not have the information (including air monitoring information), because the data do not exist, because the answer was not in the documents they relied on in the application, or because they had not done the necessary work to answer.

In five responses, Kinder Morgan gave a response which only partially answered the question or provided an answer but not the supporting data requested.

In the remainder of the responses, Kinder Morgan simply didn’t answer the questions it was asked. Here’s a snapshot of the ways the company answered questions with non-answers:

• Cited a large document or report rather than provide an clear answer;
• Referred to a document that did not contain any answer to the question; 
• Said it would file an answer later; or
• Cited a legal standard rather than address facts. 

As we mentioned above, when our clients asked if there was evidence from cold water oil spills, beyond evidence from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, of marine fish communities or habitat being impacted for more than two years after a spill, this was Kinder Morgan’s response: “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.” 

In support of that mystifying non-answer, Kinder Morgan cited a 264-page report from Enbridge’s reply evidence in the Northern Gateway pipeline hearings. 

We’ve written about how, in the wake of the 2012 omnibus budget bill, reviews of major pipeline projects have been scaled back dramatically, sacrificing good science and process for “efficiency." The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project hearing, with its 15-month time limit and lack of oral cross-examination, is a prime example of how this shift is deeply problematic. 

We are now halfway through the two rounds of intervenor information requests, which are intervenors’ only chance to ask Kinder Morgan questions about its 15,000-page application. Our clients are increasingly worried that they will be unable to meaningfully challenge Kinder Morgan’s evidence, particularly given its evasive approach to our information requests. 

But as for the fish, according to Kinder Morgan, they will be just fine.

Image: Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

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A new report reviewing Canada’s tanker spill prevention and response regime released by a government-appointed expert panel has reignited concerns over the impact increased tanker traffic and a potential oil spill could have on the British Columbia coast. 

The 66-page review of Canada’s oil-spill response system makes a total of 45 recommendations to government and industry, including annual spill training exercises, geographically based risk assessments, improved emergency response times and increased funding for Environment Canada, Transport Canada and the coast guard.

The panel also recommends the removal of a current $161 million liability cap — a change the federal government is describing as a move to a ‘polluter pay’ scenario.

Yet Karen Wristen, executive director of the Living Oceans Society, said the report’s recommendations do not hold industry accountable in the event of an oil spill:

"Under current regulations, the ship-source oil pollution fund, which is a fund presently containing about $400 million, only has to pay out $161 million per spill. What they’re saying is make the whole $400 million available for any one spill. It’s a lot of money but it’s nothing compared to the estimated loss from a spill along the Enbridge tanker route, which has been estimated to be about $10 billion. So to say this is unlimited liability and polluter pays is a bit rich," she told DeSmog Canada. 

What is worse, Wristen said, is in the event the pollution fund is depleted, the recommendation is to borrow additional funds from Canadian taxpayers.

“If we already know that the losses are going to be an order of magnitude higher, why not put a levy on industry now while they are going to be profitable, and get that money built up in the fund? This is the sort of made-for-industry approach that these recommendations take: we won’t bother about it unless it happens,” Wristen said.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt were in Vancouver to release the report.

"Marine shipping contributes importantly to Canadian economic growth, jobs and long-term prosperity," Oliver stated in a government press release. "The tanker safety report commissioned by our government provides independent, objective recommendations that will support our goal of world-class maritime safety."

But Wristen, who attended the announcement, challenges the claim this spill response regime puts the long-term interests of British Columbians first.

Canada’s plans for the West Coast don’t “deal with the fishermen and tour operators who might lose their livelihood,” Wristen said. “There’s nothing about loss of livelihood, loss of personal property, damages, that sort of thing…the costs of oil clean up alone in the last few major spills we’ve had to look at would have more than exhausted what’s available…There’d be nothing left over for the losses of ordinary Canadians.”

The federal government is hoping to establish what it called a "world-class tanker safety system" in an announcement in 2013. The national review is already being seen as an attempt to curry favour with British Columbians wary of increased oil tanker traffic on the coast.

Oil Spills a Concern for B.C. Government

In August, briefing notes from B.C. environment ministry bureaucrats revealed they were worried even a moderate oil spill would overwhelm the province’s ability to respond. Cuts in the 2012 federal budget led to the closure of Environment Canada’s regional spill response offices in Vancouver and other cities, further hindering efforts to contain an oil spill on the West Coast.

A study commissioned by the provincial government and released in October found only three to four per cent of a relatively small oil spill on B.C.’s north coast would be recovered within the first five days.

This finding was in line with B.C.’s final submission to the panel reviewing Enbridge’s Northern Gateway oil pipeline and tanker proposal, which cites an Enbridge witness as saying: "With respect to…most open ocean spills, no oil from a spill is recovered; the oil remains in the environment … there are significant periods of time [68.5% of the time during Fall/Winter in the "Open Water Area"] during which spill response will be impossible or severely constrained."

In that final submission, the province says, “The goal is effective response [to oil spills].” What’s notable is the use of the phrase “effective response” versus “world class response.” In many cases, recovering 10 per cent of spilled oil is considered “successful” and thus could be coined “world class,” but not necessarily  “effective.”

Use of Dispersant Recommended by Panel

Given the unique risks posed by bitumen, the thick substance mined from the oilsands and destined for the Northern Gateway pipeline if approved, the terminology is especially important. In B.C.’s final submission to the panel, the province writes: "[Enbridge] acknowledges that it knows of no techniques to effectively remove dissolved oil from the water column. [Enbridge] acknowledges that the fraction of the total oil volume that sinks can exceed 50%," and "recovery and mitigation options for sunken oils [e.g. weathered bitumen] are limited."

The tanker safety panel also recommended dispersants and in situ oil burning are used in the event of an oil spill — recommendations Wristen finds more favourable to industry than spill-response workers and British Columbians living or working on the coast.

“That’s another one that was a made-for-industry recommendation and it’s got really grave consequences for the environment and for people responding to the spill or anywhere near the spill. There are huge concerns with the human health impacts from the use of dispersants.”

Wristen points to an ongoing class action lawsuit against BP for its use of chemical oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico as evidence of the method’s drawbacks, including dangers to human and environmental health.

The dispersant, Wristen said, makes its way into the food chain and is acutely toxic to some organisms.

“So we think this is a very, very poor idea. It’s popular with industry, though, because it’s actually cheaper to spray this stuff and say ‘all gone’ rather than actually work at cleaning it up. It prevents the oil from collecting on the beaches in a way that you can see it. So it’s there but you can’t see it.”

Taxpayers on the Hook

The panel’s report cost taxpayers $40 million and is one of three reports expected to cost a total of $120 million.

According to Wristen it will take hundreds of millions of dollars and “probably decades” to make these recommendations work. Effective spill response plans, integrated with local resources, could take years to set up, she said.

She added: “Both ministers Raitt and Oliver were at pains to say they were not committing to implementing anything that was in [the report]. They would take these recommendations back to their respective departments and presumably industry — they said ‘stakeholders’ — to see what would work. They’ll certainly be getting a very strong message from a number of quarters, I would think, that industry really does have to pay for this.”

There’s no indication, however, that the government plans on enforcing that, Wristen said.

The tanker safety panel is due to begin work on a second report in early 2014, reviewing national standards for ship-sourced spills of bitumen and liquefied natural gas — both proposed to be shipped from the British Columbian coast. This forthcoming report will also examine requirements for oil development including spill response in the Arctic.

In 2010, there were 71 oil tanker transits through Vancouver. Pipeline proposals by Enbridge and Kinder Morgan could bring 600 oil tankers to the B.C. coast each year. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The international pipeline safety expert who last August described Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline as “high risk for a rupture” now says the probability of Line 9 rupturing is “over 90%.”

“I do not make the statement ‘high risk for a rupture’ lightly or often. There are serious problems with Line 9 that need to be addressed,” Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert with over forty years of experience in the energy sector, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

Hundreds rallied in Toronto on the weekend to voice their opposition to Enbridge’s plans to ship Alberta tar sands bitumen from Sarnia to Montreal through the 37-year-old Line 9 pipeline.

Kuprewicz also expressed concerns about transporting diluted bitumen through Line 9 saying it will increase the growth rates of cracks on the pipeline. Line 9 lies in the most populated part of Canada and crosses the St. Lawrence River and major waterways flowing into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. A Line 9 spill could pollute the drinking water of millions of Canadians.  

Extensive Stress Corrosion Cracking on Line 9

“Existing SCC (stress corrosion cracking) on Line 9 can worsen due to the increase in pressure cycling associated with shipping dilbit (diluted bitumen). This could lead to a rupture,” explains Kuprewicz.

The thick heavy crude bitumen is diluted with a condensate (natural gas or naphtha) so it can flow through pipelines. ‘Pressure cycling,’ or the variations in operating pressures of a pipeline, increase with dilbit, because dilbit can vary more in composition than light conventional oil. The greater swings in the levels of operating pressures can create cracks in a pipeline.

Kuprewicz examined Enbridge’s assessments of Line 9 and found evidence of extensive stress corrosion cracking on Line 9, most likely caused by the pipeline’s external protective coating (polyethylene tape or PE-tape) separating from the sections of Line 9, allowing water to damage the pipe.

Kuprewicz has seen this problem before. He researched the US federal investigation into the Kalamazoo, Michigan dilbit spill – the largest onshore oil spill in US history – on behalf of various concerned parties. The disbondment of PE-tape on Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline and subsequent SCC on the pipe caused the rupture. Three million litres of dilbit were spilled into the Kalamazoo River and the surrounding waterways, and the $1 billion cleanup continues to this day. 

No Line 9 rally in Toronto on October 19th.

Enbridge claims that its in-line inspection tool can detect any serious SCC threats to the pipeline. According to Kuprewicz, the in-line detection technology Enbridge is using has yet to be proven effective.

Hydrostatic Testing of Pipelines is the “Gold Standard” for Safety

“Enbridge needs to conduct a hydrostatic test on Line 9. It is the gold standard for pipeline integrity and safety. Canada has a well-established history of hydrotesting its pipelines,” Kuprewicz told DeSmog Canada.   

A hydrostatic test would pump water through Line 9 at similar pressures to those the pipeline is expected to operate at, but there is no indication that Enbridge plans to conduct hydrostatic testing.

Kuprewicz also questions Enbridge’s claims of an automatic shutdown in the event of a pressure drop in Line 9 or a 10-minute shutdown if an unexplained reading comes in from the pipeline. When a pipeline ruptures, pressure loss as well as detecting the drop can take quite a while. The 10-minute shutdown procedure existed at the time of the Kalamazoo spill and it still took Enbridge 17 hours to shut down the ruptured pipeline.

“I am not trying to be hard on Enbridge. There are definite improvements they could make to their pipeline management system that would significantly reduce the chances of a Line 9 rupture,” says Kuprewicz.

Enbridge Lacks Adequate Liability Insurance for a Line 9 Spill

The Goodman Group Ltd found that, in the event of a Line 9 spill, Enbridge’s US$685 million liability insurance for all its operations (not just Line 9) would be inadequate. The California-based consulting firm says Enbridge needs $3 billion of liability insurance for Line 9 alone.

"This is especially true in Toronto and Montreal, where the pipeline runs parallel to or across key urban infrastructure and could threaten the drinking water supply, resulting in multi-billion dollar costs," warned Ian Goodman, president of the Goodman Group.

No Line 9 rally in Toronto on October 19th.

Cleanup costs of other onshore oil spills such as Lac-Megantic in Quebec and the Kalamazoo spill were analyzed by the Goodman Group, and Line 9’s location in a highly populated area was considered. The firm concluded that a bad Line 9 spill would cost at least $1 billion. The worst-case scenario was pegged between $5-10 billion.

Ontario Demands Independent Third-Party Assessment of Line 9

The Ontario government in some ways echoed the recommendations of Kuprewicz and the Goodman Group on October 17th during a National Energy Board (NEB) public hearing in Toronto.

Ontario demanded that Enbridge conduct a hydrostatic test on Line 9, and that the company maintain US$1 billion in insurance for the pipeline. The province also called on the NEB to initiate an independent third party assessment on the state of Line 9, and not rely solely on Enbridge’s findings.

“Given the age of the pipeline, its location in a large part of southern Ontario, its additional service life of 30 years or more, and the potential adverse consequences of a rupture, it seems a matter of simple prudence and common sense to ensure the (assessments) are as thorough, comprehensive and as accurate as possible,” Rick Jennings, an assistant deputy minister with Ontario’s Ministry of Energy told the NEB panel.

“In our view, an independent third-party review is required for that assurance,” said Jennings.

No Line 9 rally in Toronto on October 19th.

The NEB hearings on Line 9 were scheduled to wrap up in Toronto on October 19th, but the NEB postponed the final hearing to an unknown date and location. The NEB could make its final decision on Line 9 as early as January 2014.

Enbridge has applied with the NEB to increase the capacity of Line 9 from 240,000 to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), reverse the pipeline to flow west-to-east and ship ‘heavy crudes’ such as dilbit through the line.

Critics of the Line 9 project say the pipeline should not be approved to ship dilbit because of the likelihood of a rupture and the adverse impacts that further expansion of the tar sands will have on climate change and the people and environment of northern Alberta. 

Image Credit: NWF, Mike Chong, Katheleen Quinn, Mike Eh-En

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Provincial auditor general Merwan Saher has agreed to conduct an audit of oil pipeline safety in Alberta, responding to requests from a coalition of 54 public interest groups dissatisfied with the provincial government's third-party report released in August.

"We will be auditing the government's monitoring systems to ensure compliance with Alberta's pipeline regulations. Our audit would include inspection and enforcement processes," Saher wrote in a letter to Alberta's Opposition parties Wildrose and the NDP, which were among the groups demanding the review.

The government-commissioned pipeline safety review, conducted by Group 10 Engineering, was announced by Energy Minister Ken Hughes in July 2012 after several major pipeline oil spills in the province, including a 475,000 litre leak from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline in Central Alberta in June. The final report was made public a year later, in August 2013.

Following the release of the report last month, a coalition representing 54 environmental, First Nations, labour and landowner groups wrote to Premier Alison Redford requesting another review. The letter stated that "Albertans deserve to know the real scope of the province's pipeline problems and they deserve real solutions," leaving the group "no choice but to begin to petition the Alberta auditor general to take on such an examination."  

Eriel Deranger, Communications Coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said “Oil spills pose a major threat to our community, which depends on clean air, water and soil to sustain our way of life. We are pleased that the Auditor General will be looking into pipeline safety, as we feel the provincial government hasn’t been doing enough to prevent spills from happening.”

“It’s been a long road pushing for this review but hopefully the Auditor General will finally give Albertan’s some answers to Alberta’s pipeline woes because the Redford government definitely hasn’t,” said Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaigner. “Groups from across the political spectrum joined together to push for this review because of the growing threats pipeline spills are posing to Alberta’s communities and environment. I hope this review will give the government time to pause on its pipeline-pushing ways because all is not well in Alberta.”

Jennifer Grant, director of the oilsands program at the Pembina Institute, applauded Saher for "showing leadership on this important issue," saying that the "audit presents an opportunity to restore Albertans' confidence in the provincial regulator's ability to manage pipelines and the associated risks."

"With 400,000 square kilometres of pipelines crisscrossing the province, and an average of two crude oil spills a day for the past 37 years, ensuring the integrity and safety of Alberta's pipeline network is absolutely critical and could set an important precedent for other jurisdictions," Grant said in a news release.

Global News reports that the auditor general "has been considering a pipeline safety audit for much of the past year" according to spokeswoman Kim Nishikaze. Nishikaze added that they "will be looking at pipeline safety in the foreseeable future" but "can't say when."

Saher wrote in his letter that the pipeline safety audit would be undertaken "as soon as reasonably possible."

Image Credit: Jasonwoodhead23 / Flickr

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